


Pincushion

by enmity



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-13 22:10:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20589917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: It's a little bit unfair.





	Pincushion

**Author's Note:**

> :|

“Are you still mad about Ephraim?” his sister asks, later. She’s fifteen and he’s eighteen, and it’s just a little bit unfair, because she looks her age and he looks perpetually stuck in the awkward growth spurt he’s supposed to have outgrown two years ago. “Ugh, don’t answer that. Of course you are.”

Tana makes a face, then returns to distractedly petting the pegasus’ mane. She makes a big show of being an adult, but it’s the same pinched expression she made when she was four and bit into a lemon just to see what it tasted like. He’d laughed and laughed.

“You should stop talking to him,” Innes says pointedly.

“Because you _say so_?” she says, all bluster and juvenile self-assurance, and defiance looks terrible on someone who doesn’t yet understand the potential repercussions of such bravado. It’s as if he only understands so well to make up for the fact she won’t. “I know! You’re just mad he beat you.”

“It’s not that,” he rebukes, because it’s the truth, and suddenly finds himself angrier than he’s able to explain, “and this isn’t about me. Stop changing the subject just because you won’t listen.”

“Enough already,” Tana groans, throwing her hands up, and it’s as easy as that, to take his concern and toss it out the window, as if it’s nothing. His frown deepens, and she laughs, distracted already. “Hey, look at this! Commander Syrene taught me the other day.”

When he looks, his sister is perched on the pegasus, her eyes as bright as her smile as she takes flight, and this, too, he remembers: hope and innocence and optimism, all the things he doesn’t have and can’t protect her from losing—not when she keeps getting bigger and older and all the more eager to slip away from his side, to a place where he fears he can no longer reach.


End file.
